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Pearl Jam member gives skate park to Browning

Patrick Douglas
Published 10:04 p.m. MT Oct. 17, 2014

In an indirect way, it was the fans of Pearl Jam who ended up providing a chunk of the almost $250,000 bill for the Browning park. Pearl Jam has a foundation set up where $2 from every concert ticket goes into a pot where the band members can then divvy it up for various philanthropic projects.(Photo: Photo courtesy Catherine Coulon)

On a bright and sunny day on a windswept prairie in late September, Jeff Ament found himself supervising the installation of another new Montana skate park, this time in Browning.

It wasn’t the first time he’d found himself in such a position, and it promises not to be the last.

The ultimate proponent of skating in Montana, Ament has overseen the construction of, and often paid for, a number of skate parks in the state.

Ament, a founding member of the rock band Pearl Jam, has worked on getting skate parks and bowls built in Missoula, Great Falls, Helena, Baker, Glendive, St. Ignatius and his hometown of Big Sandy, where he plans on adding to the bowl that he helped build a few years ago.

“My long-term goal is to contribute to or build at least another five skate parks in the next couple years,” Ament said in an interview with the Tribune from a tour stop in Austin, Texas. “Havre, Lewistown, Libby, Rocky Boy, Hays, Stevensville and adding to the Big Sandy park are also on the short list.”

Ament first started throwing around the idea of building a park in Browning in 2013, and what was a year ago just an idea is now an already-completed project.

As Ament explained, it all started with a map of the state and a plan to expand the current roster of skate parks in it.

“Last year, I pulled out a map of Montana, marked the towns with skate parks and picked 10 towns around the state that need a park,” he recalled. “Browning was at the top of the list, partly because I met a couple of kids from Browning at the St. Ignatius park.”

“Carla Lott, who works with Senator (Jon) Tester, is of the Blackfeet Tribe and she put me in touch with Terry Tatsey, Rosemary Cree Medicine and the council in Browning who have been great at facilitating building the park,” he said.

In an indirect way, it was the fans of Pearl Jam who ended up providing a chunk of the almost $250,000 bill for the park. Pearl Jam has a foundation set up where $2 from every concert ticket goes into a pot where the band members can then divvy it up for various philanthropic projects.

“(The foundation) allows us to contribute to an array of organizations that each member of the band is close to. I used most of my chunk from this past year for the (Browning) skate park,” said Ament, who also contributed a portion of his own money to the project.

The result is an impressive and quite large park that stands out even over some of the other parks in the larger cities in the state, according to Ament.

“It’s one of the coolest designs I’ve ever seen, and Evergreen is putting such an amazing finish on it, I think it’s the best park in the state,” Ament said. “The kids that we’ve run into seem super stoked. I’m not sure they know what they have yet.”

Working with Evergreen on the both retro and futuristic skate park in Browning, Ament was quick to point out the other revolutionary ideas Evergreen has brought to the industry.

“Billy Coulon and the whole Evergreen crew have created an original way of designing and building skate parks,” he said.

“One of my favorite bowl shapes from the ’70s is the capsule,” he added. “The Big O Skate park in Orange, Calif., had the best one with a channel roll-in. I’ve talked to a lot of the old pros and they said it was one of their favorites.”

“I met a skater in Texas named Brandon Kent a couple years ago that turned out to be the son of the architect that designed the Big O,” Ament said. “So he sent me the original plans. We used the exact footprint. The rest of the (Browning) park is 10,000 square feet of moonscape, part ’70s pump bumps and snake runs and part contemporary Oregon style design.”

In recent years, Ament has helped put together a celebration in Big Sandy called the Big Sandy Skate Jam and he’s invited out friends from all over the country to showcase their skating skills in the small community.